Traditions and Experential Learning. When Should We Break Traditions?

I only made it to page 3 of this week's chapter, Experience and Learning, to find resonance and meaning.  According to Dewey and Knowles, experience is at the heart of adult learning but can also serve as a barrier to new learning (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). Upon reading this, I began to consider how our own good or bad educational experiences effect new learning.  For example, individuals who have positive past learning experiences tend to want to reproduce that learning environment in new learning opportunities.  Conversely, individuals who have negative past learning experiences tend to stray away from that learning environment and may change the way they learn when learning something new. However, bad past learning experiences may serve as a barrier for new learning altogether.

Let's face it, by the time one becomes an adult learner many habits, biases, and perceptions have developed which could stall or motivate us in learning new and alternative ways of thinking.  Chances are that the development of these learning habits were passed onto us by our individual learning mentors and environment.  Based upon this thought, we are all products of an educational system filled with educational traditions.  Tradition can be described as the transmission of an established way of thinking, feeling, or doing and is rooted in experience. Traditions are important to many people, organizations, and communities because they provide familiarity, security, and a way of doing things. Sometimes though, traditions paralyze us from exploring new experiences. Therefore, how do we determine which educational traditions serve our purpose and which ones inhibit us from moving forward?  Educational leaders and instructors struggle with traditions and how to implement change.

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Since experience is the process of personally undergoing, observing, or encountering something, educational traditions can be changed.  How do we do that?  According to Lewins' organizational change theory, there are three steps to implement change in learning (2014).  First, one's previous learning must be unfrozen by introducing new information that reveals a discrepancy between past thinking and desired new thinking (2014). Secondly, the actual change in knowledge and thinking takes place and finally, the new learning is refrozen in the individual (2014). This process is similar to transformative learning in which a reflective experience and new knowledge emerges from questions about discrepancies between past and present situations.  Flipping the classroom, gamification, and the utilization of current technology are some examples of changing traditional lecture learning to new engaging learning methods.

While I believe traditions provide familiarity and security for many instructors and students, we cannot accomplish a desired educational culture  of self-directed, responsible, and engaged adult learners if we are not willing to create new traditions.

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 References:

Merriam, S.B. and Bierema, L.L. (2014). Adult learning:  Linking theory and practice. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.